What? - Collaborative Web Search: Who, What, Where, When, and Why - page 16

Table 3.2: Self-generated collaborative search tasks conducted by 10 groups of co-workers,
students, and family members using the WeSearch system ( Morris et al. , 2010b ).
Group Relationship

Task

Colleagues (administrative assistants) Select the location for their company's next off site

meeting.

Colleagues (paralegals) Conduct background research on a plaintiff in a

pending court case.

Colleagues (bankers) Learn about local businesses who might be in need

of financial services.

Colleagues (food scientists) Research and describe antimicrobial peptides for

identifying bacteria.

Colleagues (tech support technicians) Compile a list of commonly reported problems

with a piece of technology commonly utilized by
their customers.

Family Shop for a new home computer.

Family Plan an upcoming ski trip to Colorado.

Family Plan an upcoming trip to Montana.

Students Research treatments for Alzheimer's disease.

Students Learn about art classes they might take together.

such as retrieving technical information or conducting literature searches were also prevalent among
the survey population.
Working on school assignments is another common motivating collaborative search task, as
many teachers assign reports to groups to work on together due to pedagogies that emphasize the
value of teamwork ( Large et al. , 2002 ; Twidale et al. , 1997 ; Amershi and Morris , 2008 ; Morris et al. ,
2010b ). In addition to students collaborating amongst themselves, Morris, M.R. ( 2008 ) found that
sometimes parents and children will collaboratively search online together in order for the parent to
assist the child with a school homework assignment.
In addition to understanding the tasks that motivate symmetric collaborations on search, some
researchers have investigated the goals driving asymmetric collaborations, such as posing a question
to one's social network using tools like Facebook and Twitter. For example, Martha might have
been able to identify a good company to inspect her house for mold by asking her social network at
large, posting the question, “Does anyone know a good mold-removal company?” as her Facebook
status. Tables 3.3 and 3.4 show the common question types and topics identified by Morris et al.
( 2010c ) as being asked of one's social network. These were found by surveying 624 social network
users for examples of questions they had asked or answered. Subjective information needs, such
as seeking recommendations and opinions (51% of questions), were the primary type of question
motivating this type of collaborative behavior, although seeking factual knowledge was prevalent as